US shares have edged up, providing some relief to investors hit by continuing jitters across global stock markets. The Dow Jones and Nasdaq both opened lower, reflecting declines in leading European markets, but subsequently made limited gains in morning trading. Europe's main share indexes all lost value with the FTSE 100, the Cac 40 and the Dax down more than 1% by 1600 BST. Worries about inflation and interest rate rises in the US have overshadowed corporate profits growth. Analysts expect volatile trading to continue after poor economic figures prompted a global sell-off last week. Weighing on the markets is the fear that higher interest rates needed to rein in inflation could kill off the global economic recovery in the process. ... http://news.bbc.co.uk

A top procurement official in the Bush administration abandoned his duty to the public in order to serve lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and the official later concealed his conduct from investigators, a federal prosecutor said Wednesday. At the start of the first trial in the Abramoff influence peddling scandal, prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg told a jury that David Safavian provided substantial amounts of information about government-controlled properties that the lobbyist wanted for himself or his clients.Using his official position, Safavian “worked first and foremost for a rich, powerful” lobbyist and personal friend and then he “lied and concealed in order to keep the truth from the public,” Zeidenberg told the jury of 10 women and two men. Abramoff “constantly dangled” the prospect that Safavian could return to the private sector and join Abramoff’s lobbying operation, “where he would make a great deal of money and he would play a great deal of golf,” Zeidenberg told the jury....http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12953015/from/RSS/

The web should remain neutral and resist attempts to fragment it into different services, web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee has said. Recent attempts in the US to try to charge for different levels of online access web were not "part of the internet model," he said in Edinburgh. He warned that if the US decided to go ahead with a two-tier internet, the network would enter "a dark period". Sir Tim was speaking at the start of a conference on the future of the web. "What's very important from my point of view is that there is one web," he said. "Anyone that tries to chop it into two will find that their piece looks very boring." ...http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5009250.stm

The next phase of the web could face "big privacy" issues, a senior UK academic has warned. Hugh Glaser of the University of Southampton made the comments at the WWW2006 conference in Edinburgh. He was describing the semantic web, an attempt to make the web more intelligent. Privacy problems could occur, he said, because the semantic web deliberately combines multiple sources of information about people and places. Although some semantic web programs have been developed, it will be many years before they are publicly available. "I don't want to even speculate on when people may be using it," said Mr Glaser. However, researchers are keen to start tackling concerns about the next wave of web technology early. ...http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5009774.stm

The Senate voted Wednesday to limit debate on election-year immigration legislation, clearing the way for final passage later this week of a bill that calls for tougher border security as well as an eventual chance at citizenship for millions of men and women in the country illegally. The vote to advance the measure was 73-25, 13 more than the 60 needed. The outcome was not a surprise, and even some of the bill's opponents said they were satisfied they had been given ample opportunity over past weeks to try and give the bill a more conservative cast. CBS News correspondent Bob Fuss reports that after more amendments, the bill will likely pass Thursday. But then comes the hard part – reconciling it with an enforcement-only bill that passed the House, declaring everyone here without papers a felon and making it a crime to help them. ...http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/05/24/politics/main1649627.shtml?source=RSS&attr=U.S._1649627

Sixty suspected Taleban militants and five Afghan security personnel have died in a major clash in the south, a top Afghan military commander says. The fighting took place in Uruzgan province late on Tuesday, Gen Rahmatullah Raufi told reporters. The US military in Afghanistan has confirmed the incident, but says only 24 militants have been killed. Separately, a UK spokesman says a British aircraft has been involved in an incident in Helmand province. No details are available but reports say an aircraft is on fire in the airstrip at the provincial capital, Lashkargah. A BBC correspondent says he can see a huge plume of black smoke from the site. US-led coalition forces and Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers were involved in the fighting in Uruzgan which took place near the provincial capital Tirin Kot. Officials say the clash began when a joint ANA and coalition patrol came under attack. ...http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5011502.stm